


Echoes

by buckybleeds



Series: Alphabet Soup [5]
Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Bathing/Washing, HTP, HYDRA Trash Party, Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, M/M, Rape Aftermath, Sex Worker Steve Rogers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-22
Updated: 2019-06-22
Packaged: 2020-05-16 18:12:50
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,881
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19323442
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/buckybleeds/pseuds/buckybleeds
Summary: History doesn't repeat itself but sometimes it rhymes.





	Echoes

**Author's Note:**

> This follows "Dinner" but can be read as a standalone fic.  
> It also wallows in misery.  
> Enjoy!

He couldn't stop staring at Steve. At the breadth of him, the height. He was perfect and bizarre, a giant stomping through the woods to chase away Bucky's memories of a bird-boned boy, so slight and pale and unearthly that he may as well have been one of the little folk from the stories their mothers had sung late into the night. 

The stubborn jut of his jaw was the same, though. And the heaviness of his lips and the brightness of his blue eyes. 

So Bucky couldn't stop staring, cataloging the sameness and the difference until they ran together and overlapped in his head and he couldn't tell what was real anymore. 

In his defense he'd been dying of pneumonia a few days ago, had a concussion still healing from Lohmer's beating, and it wasn't every day that his scrawny roommate who was _supposed_ to be safely dismissed ad 4F and unenlisted in fucking _Brooklyn_ turned up a foot taller and a buck fifty heavier than he had been in the middle of a goddamned _war zone_. 

So he couldn't stop staring. 

He stared while they marched, he stared while they paused to rest, and he kept right on starting as Steve wrapped a fist in the collar of his shredding sweater, hauled him into the woods, slammed him into a tree, and asked what his fucking problem was, pal. 

In his defense he'd had a really shitty month. 

"I know it don't look right, I know it's a joke, I'm sorry, I'm sorry it was the only thing I could do. I was going crazy and now I don't regret it, you woulda died in there." Steve was talking. Probably about something important. Bucky raised an eyebrow at him, prepared to make a smart remark, and was mortified when a sob escaped instead. 

In his defense it had been a really, really bad month. 

Steve had him wrapped up in thick arms, was inexpertly cooing at him and trying to offer comfort and all of it was wrong but he still smelled like Steve and his voice still melted over Bucky like butter so it couldn't be all bad. 

Bucky, for his part, twined his arms around Steve's neck and decided he was going to do his best to never, ever let go of him again. 

Steve grabbed on tighter and lifted him off the ground. "I love you," he said, low and deep and hot against Bucky's ear in the cold mountain air. "I love you and I thought you were dead and I didn't see the sense in letting another day go by without saying it."

Bucky suddenly couldn't stand to have Steve touching him. He eeled out of his arms and away from his warmth until Bucky was crouched alone at the base of a tree, hissing out painful, whining breaths as he tried to keep the hitching in his chest from building into a wail. 

"I'm sorry," Steve said, "I shouldn't have-"

"I tried to wait for you," Bucky forced the words out through clenched teeth and the taste of salt. 

Steve crouched down in front of him and spread his arms, not reaching for Bucky but offering himself if he was wanted. He looked abandoned and confused. 

"I wanted to come home to you," Bucky continued, feeling the awful heat in his face and the headache building behind his eyes from crying, "wanted to kiss you again, take another strip of photos in that Coney island booth. I wanted my hands on you every day, Stevie, long as I can remember."

"But not now?"

Bucky put his hands through his hair and grabbed on, tugging at his scalp. His mouth was a harsh, jagged gash in the bottom of his face, teeth ground together and lips curled like a snarling dog and he choked on another high, awful whine trying not to scream. 

"Buck, if you don't want-"

"I tried to wait for you but they wouldn't let me," he hissed, curling in on himself further, wanting to disappear. 

Steve was reaching out for him now, inching forward in his knees and ignoring the snow soaking through his clothes, too big and blonde and gold and perfect to be cold and empty like Bucky was.

"Bucky?"

His eyes were hurt, hollow, and pleading as they searched Steve's face. 

"I wanted you to be first," he whispered, and then Steve understood. 

"Oh, oh, sweetheart," he had his hands on Bucky, wanting to steady him, warm him, pull him out of the snow and away from the war, settling for pulling him into a hug instead.

"I'm sorry," he ground out, face pressed into the stranger's body that smelled like Steve. "I always wanted you, I'm sorry, I'm-"

Steve lifted his chin and gently kissed his forehead. "Ain't no sorry, sweetheart. You didn't do nothing wrong."

 

***

 

"You performed beautifully," the handler said. "You won't be punished, you didn't do anything wrong."

It wad snowing outside the handler's large brick house. The Asset had come in through the yard and a few flakes still sparked in its lank hair. It was kneeling at the handler's feet, where it belonged, where it was such a pretty, stupid thing. 

The handler leaned toward it and pressed his lips to the Asset's forehead. "You're perfect for me, aren't you?"

 

***

 

Steve kept close to him on the march back to the SSR base and, immediately after reporting to Phillips, commandeered an unused officer's room, a kettle full of hot water, and Bucky.

He held his face in his hands and kissed him reverently. He tugged at the bottom of Bucky's disintegrating shirt and carefully helped him strip it off. He remembered Bucky's sure, soothing voice talking to him through a fever while his strong hands soothed over Steve's shaking frame.

Bucky was hesitant, wrapping his arms around himself.

"I don't want you to see."

Steve chewed at his lip and hummed to himself.

"I didn't want you to see me sweating through the flu last winter. I'm not gonna treat you like glass, Buck. You're hurt. Let me help."

"What I said last night it - he - that didn't hurt me. I'm okay."

Steve stepped closer to him and ran a thumb over the cut high on Bucky's cheek.

"Morita said one of the officers lit into you with a club because you were slow on the line. You gonna tell me that didn't hurt?"

Bucky frowned at that.

"Doesn't hurt bad. I can handle it."

Steve smiled sadly at him.

"Yeah, but the thing is you don't have to."

It was enough to surprise a laugh out of Bucky. A brittle, startled bray of a laugh, but Steve would take what he could get.

"Okay, alright, you got me there, punk." He slipped off his undershirt and turned away from Steve to shuck off his pants.

"I got you everywhere, jerk. Anywhere you need me, I got you."

"Sap."

"You know it," Steve came up behind him and held Bucky's too-thin frame against the strange new volume of his chest. He nuzzled into the slope of Bucky's shoulder and opened his lips to suck gently at the skin there before trailing softer, more innocent kisses up his throat to his temple, feeling some of the tension drift away from his taut back. Steve maneuvered him to sit in the room's lone chair while Steve took a place on the bed and poured water from the hot kettle into a stark white bowl. "Let's get you cleaned up."

 

***

 

The Asset stood on a lurid pink and orange beach towel so as not to drip on the handler's nice floors. The handler was divesting it of its armored jacket and had made the Asset remove its soiled boots. 

It hurt.

The handler pulled away with its jacket. The undershirt the Asset wore was stained red in a large, spreading arc from halfway down its ribcage to just above its hip.

"Status report," the handler said, and began to cut away the thin cotton shirt.

"Functional. Moderate impairment, operating at approximately eighty percent of tested norms. Two ribs broken, one lung punctured. Superficial cuts and scratches. Estimated seven hour recovery period for optimal functioning."

"Hmm. Were you shot?"

"Affirmative."

"Do you require any extraordinary maintenance," the handler had removed its undershirt and was looking at the ugly wound on the lower right side of its ribcage. The hole was knitting closed and the handler poked one manicured finger into the shiny, swollen mess of blood and skin.

"Negative. Collapsed lung has self-repaired; caloric requirements are above high normal for optimal functioning for the next thirty hours of operation."

"Good," the handler said, wiggling his finger in the bullet hole. He shifted it away then pressed it back in.

It hurt.

"We'll feed you after. Right now let's just get  you cleaned up."

 

 

***

 

Letting Steve wash his wounds didn't help to stop the doubling that kept crowding into his brain. He'd look at Steve and see the unfamiliar body and feel anxiety creeping in only for it to be brushed aside by the sheer rightness of a wry smile or the deep bark of a laugh. 

It was giving him vertigo to look up at Steve, to see himself small next to the blonde's thick body. 

Steve was helping him, cleaning him up after a fight, talking him through a fever;  doing what Bucky was supposed to do. Steve was big like Bucky was supposed to be. Steve was calm and confident and Bucky was full of restless, useless rage. Everything felt upside down. 

"It's like the fairies came for us, but late," he mumbled, watching Steve's hand move a cloth over his thigh, still delicate enough to sketch, but big and broad now.

"What?"

"Like changelings. We went to sleep one night and woke up different the next day, someplace far away and strange."

Steve's hand stopped its stroking. He dropped the towel into the bloody water filling the clean white bowl. 

"Bucky, what were they doing to you on that table?" Steve had seen the marks they'd scored into him, the lines of pincushion punctures up and down his biceps and the carved-out places along his spine. 

"I don't know. They said they were testing."

"Testing what?"

Bucky looked at and through Steve, his eyes as flat and dull as a snake's. He pushed at Steve's shoulders, moving the bigger man to lean against the wall behind the cot. Bucky nudged Steve's legs apart and settled between them, his back to Steve's front so he didn't have to look into those bright, lively blue eyes. 

 

 

For a second he hated Steve. Hated how whole and clean he was, hated how he had only been in the field one day and was going to be a hero, hated him for not hurting. 

But then he breathed out and was back to loving him with his whole heart, loving him so much it hurt to think that he was here and in danger and that anything could ever touch him and degrade him the way Bucky had been degraded by the creeping fog of war. 

"I don't know what they were testing," he said, finally. "It. It just. Maybe they just wanted to hurt someone. I don't know."

Steve tugged Bucky tighter against himself and buried his nose in the greasy nest of unwashed hair. 

"Don't," Bucky said. "I'm a mess."

"I don't care."

"I don't wanna get you dirty."

"I don't care."

"Steve," his voice caught, "I get it if. You know. If you wanna. Find someone else, someone who's just for you."

"You're the only one for me, Buck."

It was going to be hard to talk through the tears without Steve noticing. 

"You deserve someone special, not some fuckin' squid's sloppy seconds." He felt bitterness drying up the water that wanted to fill his throat. 

Steve snorted against Bucky's neck and he felt the gentle, sharp contact of Steve nipping at the hinge of his jaw. 

"You know where I learned to suck cock, sweetheart."

He did. It was hard to make ends meet as a scrawny artist who couldn't lift a box of groceries. But being pretty and slight and living near the docks sure helped.

"That's different," Bucky frowned. It'd never bothered him that Steve chased tricks two nights a week only to come home and let Bucky lick the taste off his tongue. Got him kind of hot, actually, that the guy who gave five dollar suckjobs fell apart in Bucky's mouth. 

"How? If anybody's dirty in here it's the whore."

Bucky chewed that thought over.

"You decide you wanna do it, it's not just. They don't just use you." 

Steve kissed his temple. 

"I'm sorry they made you. I'm sorry they took that from you. But you ain't any more used up and sloppy than me and I know for a fact that you think the sun shines outta my ass so I'm gonna keep thinkin the sun shines outta yours."

"Sap. You're the sappiest whore I ever met, Rodgers."

Steve kissed behind Bucky's ear and held his hands with their fingers latticed together. 

"You gotta meet more, then. I ain't nothin' on some of the girls."

"No offense to your girlfriends, Stevie, but I think I know all I need to. You're the only one I want."

"I love you," Steve said, but he wasn't going to let Bucky off the hook. "It doesn't matter to me at all except that it wasn't what you wanted."

Bucky shifted uncomfortably. 

"He starved me for it."

Steve didn't say anything, just squeezed his hands tighter. 

"Five days. And for two days he starved everyone in the cell." Bucky pulled one hand lose and turned on his side to pillow his head on Steve's chest. "He just wanted my mouth at first. Made me do him and his subordinates then let me eat off the floor and he petted me like a dog."

"Jesus."

"When he. When he went all the way with me it was his last night on the base. He put me in a pretty little robe and tied me down with a pretty little bow like I was a present he was giving himself." He felt Steve's chin settling on the top of his head and realized all those long, strong limbs were lifted around him, keeping him close, keeping him safe. 

"All I could think was that it wasn't supposed to be like that. I was supposed to wait for you."

Steve just soothed a hand up his side and hummed comfortingly at him and was generally so perfect and sweet that Bucky was suddenly filled with terrible understanding. 

"Christ. Jesus fucking Christ, Stevie."

"What, Buck?"

"What about you?"

"What?"

"Why do you know what to say so well? Why aren't you mad at me? How many times has it happened to you?"

Steve kept stroking his ribs didn't even break stride.

"I don't keep count. It's not a contest."

"Oh God, is that what it means when you've gotten into another fistfight?"

Steve just kept stroking him from shoulder to hip, regular as a heartbeat. 

"Sometimes. Sometimes it really is just a fight."

"Why didn't you say nothin'?" He could feel Steve shrugging underneath him. 

"Didn't seem to matter much. It's part of the job. Sometimes Johns want more than you're selling. Not much you can do about it when you're the size of a twelve-year-old."

"And you just kept going back out anyway?"

"Getting lined up doesn't mean I don't owe rent."

"Stevie. You know I'da covered you." 

"I know you'd try.  Maybe pick up a fourth job, maybe skip dinner for a week. Like that wouldn't kill you eventually. But it doesn't matter now. Now we're here and I've got you and you've got me and nobody is gonna take you away from me. Nobody's gonna touch you like that again."

Bucky realized that he felt better. He thought he should feel furious and sick about Steve's revelation and maybe on an abstract level he did, but mostly he felt better. He wasn't alone. Steve had gone out and risked himself to keep Bucky from working himself to death. Bucky had given himself away to protect his guys. Bad things had happened, things that hurt his heart and made him want to scream. But that was over. That was done. They'd survived. 

 

***

 

The handler had washed the Asset and clothed it in fine, soft cloth and said "don't you look darling" and "nothing can take you away from me anymore" and "good boy, just like that" and the Asset had complied because that's what it had been programmed to do. 

When the handler was satisfied he pulled the Asset onto the bed with him and allowed it to rest its head on his chest while he stroked its side. 

The Asset was not configured to experience emotions. They were not relevant to the current mission. 

But still. 

Sometimes emotions rang through it like echoes, resonating before fading away. 

Something about being clean in bed with a warm body for a pillow, a hand gently stroking its arm, and a flash of blonde hair made it feel. Strange.

Safe. 

Like it wasn't alone. 


End file.
